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Today's blog is a public service announcement.​ I was wandering around my local Kroger the other day and decided, on a whim, to try this Herdez brand microwave meal, see the photo below. I also bought a pork chile verde entree. I can't be bothered to cook lunch for myself, so it's soup, or a sandwich, leftovers from dinner, or a frozen meal I can nuke in the microwave. Unless I'm meeting someone for lunch, I seldom go out; the high fat, high calorie choices out there are too tempting.

Notice the Spanish at the top of the box. It says "con toda confianza". Now, my grade school Spanish is pretty bad, considering how it was contaminated with a lot of Yiddish, but even I can translate the words to English. It says with confidence. Also notice the nice chunky morsels of tender beef swimming in the guajillo chile sauce.​So it was with confidence I bought the two entrees, and with that same confidence, I decided to try the beef version for lunch. When I took the bowl out of the box, my confidence started to ebb. Through the plastic I could see a mound of rice on one side, and a brown blob on the other. No meat was apparent, but I figured it was lurking down at the bottom of the bowl, beneath the frozen sauce. Five minutes later, here's the result:

Where's the beef?

Now, I don't expect the actual meal to look exactly like its advertised counterpart. The Whataburger I buy doesn't have the lettuce tweezered on just so, nor has the fry cook picked through a bushel of tomatoes to find just the right shade of red, nor is the cheese precisely placed so that the corners flop daintily and evenly over the sides. But the elements advertised are in their promised shape and form. What happened to the CHUNKS of meat seen in the photo? This was nothing but shredded glop.​Surely, this had to be an anomaly, so I opened the other Herdez entree, the pork chile verde. This was even worse:

The other white meat?

The beef, at least, was identifiable as beef, or maybe beef-like. This "pork" was completely unappetizing, a grey mush with tiny bits of mystery meat.

So, how'd they taste? I have no idea. I was too revolted by the "pork" to want to try either, and both ended up in the trash.​I am confident I won't be buying Herdez products in the future.